Some people might, but that's not what I'm guilty of here. Ref has been poor, as usual. I also disagreed with one of the yellows Swansea received. But I guess I'm just not objective.

Yes I am. Clearly not a dive 'ffs'. Not a penalty either, just fell under pressure. Horseshit yellow card.

Absolute farce that he has booked Buckley there, arms all over him then gets clipped. Commentator is terrible. Just said he was booked for fouling the Swansea player. Highly doubt it, ref thinks he dived.

Mad how Buckley can place a 30 yard pass with precision, but with a very vulnerable goal at his mercy he can't place it in the gaps and instead blazes over.

Yes, at least two occasions.

Nine strikers sounds like enough for one to get on the end of it.

Think he was trying to gauge if he could get his head on it. Zeefuik's marking was criminal.

Poor marking. The lad we almost signed scores, obviously. Early too. Certainly undoes that plan some suggested of keeping the clean sheet and trying to nick it later...

Butterworth came off the bench for Fleetwood today, but their goalscorer was another ex-Rover, Anthony Pilkington.

Sorry to hear it Darren. Are you just due to miss the start or the whole thing?

I've never understood this line of reasoning. If you're fit to play 20 minutes, you're fit to play 90? Nah.

Yeh I edited the post to reflect that before yours popped up, so I do agree there. Also agree the team is about to look stronger, though it's a shame we don't have them fully fit for this one because it's probably our easiest game for a bit.

Another issue with that front three is two of them are having their debuts, so haven't established much understanding with each other or the rest of the team yet. However I do support keeping Khadra and BBD on the bench to limit the risk of injury. BBD probably tired too after his excursion, so best coming on against tired legs. Hopefully with the game still in the balance (or better yet, in our favour).

Not a striker in that front 3. Hedges has the closest claim. Could be a tough day to score again. Buckley doesn't really have a goal in him (4 career goals), Giles has 6 career goals...think we are reliant on Hedges today (and the bench of course, with BBD and Khadra), hope he's a good un. It does sound like he has been training well. Of course, if we do keep another clean sheet then yes, anybody popping up with 1 will do the job.

Continuing to keep clean sheets with the frequency we do is bordering on a ludicrous expectation. Our defence are excellent and great credit to them, but they're not impregnable, and part of our run of clean sheets has been luck, as it always must be. Plenty of times where we could have had penalties against or the ball flashed just wide or hit woodwork with the keeper beaten. 9 clean sheets in 11 extrapolated over a full season would be more than 37 clean sheets. Such a thing isn't realistically possible I'm sure. The most clean sheets anyone (well, a single GK) in the EFL has kept in a season since 2006 is 28, which was for Bristol Rovers in the 2006/2007 season in League Two. The most in the Championship in that period was 25, in 2009/10 for Swansea. Point being, you can't really expect that to continue indefinitely. We will ship goals at times, and will have games where we need to score 2 or more to get anything. I think pointing out we need to rediscover our scoring ways to achieve success is a valid one. It isn't necessary in every game, but it will be necessary in the remainder of the season as a whole.

Just had a nosey back at the first page of this topic, and saw this ill-fated assessment from 2015. Looking at the other posts around then, the crop he was talking about included Raya, Lenihan and probably Travis. Oops! On another note, isn't it time this thread got renamed to say U23s instead of U21s? Just for the sake of accuracy.

Aye I'm not suggesting he isn't doing a job, and probably a good one. But by the nature of his role it will take time before we really reap the benefits. He has had nothing to do with the development of Lenihan, Travis, Nyambe, Raya, all the lads that have come through in recent years. He will have had minimal impact, relatively speaking, if any, on the development so far of the likes of Carter, Butterworth, Vale...even for the likes of A. Wharton and Phillips it will have been minimal so far. My point is, he isn't the reason for the upturn in productivity and talent in the last few years, which is what your initial mention of him seemed to be implying (by what you were quoting when you said it). But again, if he's highly regarded I'm more than happy he's in the setup and hopefully we forge even more stars with him over the next few years.

I'll be really, really disappointed if we only get 7 points from the next 7 games. A run like that from our position essentially means you're in freefall.

How long has he been in the building?

Oh weird, the FA Cup goal didn't show up. Maybe it was in a qualifying round? The FA Trophy isn't showing up at all either. Cheers for the corrections. He didn't pull up trees there, but given injuries and being played wide it doesn't seem too bad. Shame the level was low (probably a bit closer to League Two than we give it credit for though) but that means more games. We also don't know how well suited to their system and style of play he was. I've no qualms with him sitting the bench if we are stretched. I remember him cracking the crossbar too, which is Butterworth's main claim to fame, so I don't feel we have downgraded that option. I feel McBride is finished here. It's a truly terrible level he has gone to, and unlike Vale it was during the window so plenty of better sides to potentially go to. What happened to the EFL League One interest he was meant to have from...Crewe was it? Given his contract is up in the summer, I'm not sure what we expect to learn about him in the Scottish third tier in order to decide whether to trigger that extension. Even if we do, that gives him one more year to earn a new deal, at 21 and with his only achievement in his time here being a 12 goal PL2 season (I think a few were penalties too?), which at that point will have been 3 seasons ago. He'll likely have no chance of first team involvement next season and need a damned sight better loan at that point to show us he is worth persisting with. I think he should have been allowed a couple of sub appearances whilst he was hot last season, especially in our dead rubbers, where I still struggle to forgive TM for not trying out more youngsters. I do wonder if these low calibre loans sometimes demoralise the players who feel they're doing well in the top youth league and should either be challenging for our bench or getting better loans. In some case it may fire them up, almost by slighting them, and I think that may have happened with Vale. Plus it's still learning how to play against stronger men. But on the whole I'm not a fan, and I find our loaning out policy confusing. So many times we have refused to send out the 6th choice player on a good loan for a position we are well stocked, only to sometimes send them anyway after the window has closed to a non league team. Meanwhile we just sent our 5th choice CB out on loan, when we play 3 at a time in that position and are challenging for promotion, plus one of the other 4 is highly injury prone. Barmy.

How new is he, a year ago? If so he will have nothing to do with the recruitment of any of the players we are talking about on here I should think. As you know in most cases (other than our Manure, Lpool etc cast offs, which we have been shopping for for many years) we get these lads young and develop them over a number of years. Hopefully his expertise serves us well in the years to come though. Always good to hear we have quality staff, after letting so many go in recent years.

Our best u23s are playing in our first team too, or on loan.

Like I said though, we have signed players before who were said in public to need to work on this before they could be regulars in the team. Poveda, I think Khadra too has had comments to that effect, Chapman, Rothwell. I'm sure there are others I'm not remembering.

I'm a bit bemused that the bookies (Coral anyway) seem to have Swansea as firm favourites for this one. 2.5 for the win, we're 3.1 (draw is 3.1 too). I get that they're at home, but we are 2nd, they're 19th. Our form over the last 5 games is also better (8 points to their 5). We have players available who weren't before (Giles, Hedges, and probably BBD). They've lost their last 2 games. I fail to see how any of this makes them favourites with the bookmakers. Another confusing set of odds on Coral, Zeefuik scoring is about the same odds as Khadra to score. Admittedly Khadra may be absent (probably the only way Zeefuik might play up front) but Zeefuik has 3 career goals in about 170 appearances. Khadra has 3 in 18 appearances.

We haven't let all the reserve forwards go. We have Vale, who has just notched 6 goals in 2 games, something none of the lads we have loaned out have achieved. Soon, our options in that area will be BBD, Khadra, Hedges, Dolan, Gallagher, Vale. 6 players for 2 spots. With Poveda to also be available later in the season, most likely.